Rrrowl! Beware Cougar’s Young Niece, the Cheetah

It was 2:30 a.m. on a school night about a year ago when Seth, Joel and Dana left the party and headed into the rain. The party had been unremarkable, only this time Seth had allowed the open bar to get the better of him. He knew he was completely wasted. What he didn’t know was that a predator was watching his every move.

“I can barely stand,” Seth said, swaying innocently on the soggy sidewalk. (Seth’s a gentleman and asked that I change the names and obscure certain details in unfurling the horrors that so thoroughly furled him that night, in order to protect the honor of a woman.) He was 24 at the time, a magazine writer.

The fellow was babbling, stumbling drunk, and Dana chirped: ‘I’m heading the same way, let’s share a cab!’

A few months later, Seth found himself watching helplessly late one night as Dana picked off one of his pals much the same way she had him: The fellow was babbling, stumbling drunk, and Dana chirped: “I’m heading the same way, let’s share a cab!” Another poor shmo who hosted an after-party at his pad one night to enjoy a little group reefer session suddenly found himself alone, except for Dana. Game over.

“She knows what she’s doing,” Seth told me.

MUCH HAS BEEN made of the so-called cougar, the older dame, early 40s on up, who has developed a taste for the younger man-beast. Dana’s hunting methods and psychology bear no resemblance to the cougar. As Seth aptly points out, “A cougar would fuck and then leave and not feel bad.”

Instead, Seth awoke to Dana’s limpid eyes, followed by an awkward kiss in broad daylight as the two parted ways on the street. The cheetah stays the night.

The Dana “type” was familiar to me. There was a girl I knew in L.A. who fit the bill. She’d sunk her teeth into at least 20 percent of her lopsidedly male friend group. All you had to do was watch the faces when she approached to know which ones she’d had her way with.

Good God, I thought, how many of my fellow men are at risk at this very moment?!

I thought the same on a recent night here in New York, when my wife showed me a “funny” text one of her girlfriends sent her inquiring what she was up to—we were in a car, heading home—and sniggering that she herself was “out on the prowl.” I immediately thought of the widely held view that single women are keen to get their paws on a hunk of man to hunker down with for the winter months. I looked out the car window—it was raining. A cold, insinuating rain. The conditions were perfect for a cheetah to a strike.